EcoBook

We are India's most economical stationery thrift store set up for students at schools to help them buy textbooks at a fraction of the original price.

Students in India, spend around INR 1500-2000 annually on textbooks. Such costs are massive for many students in India. By buying new books, students are not only spending a lot of money, but are also involved in the cutting-down of trees. Such harmful environmental activities have led to disasters such as global warming and climate change. We at EcoBook, have pitched up a plan where we save up the costs of these students. We setup thrift stores at schools where students can sell their reusable books at INR 5 and buy other reusable books at INR 10. By doing this, students are not only saving a lot of their money, but are also saving hundreds of trees. The profits made by reselling these used books bring a net revenue of around INR 30,000-1,00,000. This amount is entirely donated to the school for them to provide students with more financial aid and scholarships to the students in need.

Students in India, spend around INR 1500-2000 each year, this is because each textbook costs around INR 200-300, such costs are massive for many students in India. By buying new books, students are not only spending a lot of money, but are also involved in the cutting-down of trees. Such harmful environmental activities have led to disasters such as global warming and climate change. This problem of buying new books, is faced by hundreds of thousands of students throughout India. Students find it difficult to buy and sell used textbooks from local stationeries since they would spend more money on travelling to these small number of stationery-thrift stores than on the books they need. This is why EcoBook collaborates with a number of schools to setup up it's stores at the schools itself to make the entire process easier.  Approximately 800 million trees are cut-down each year in India to make new textbooks for students from grades 1-12. By buying these books, students are basically involving themselves to be the reasons for climate change and other natural calamities.

A large portion of young Indian students face financial problems during their schooling. They spend around INR 1500-2000 each year on new textbooks. It is hard for these students to find stationery thrift stores since there are a very few of them in India as compared to the number of students in the country. These students face difficulties in paying tuition fees often.  The solution EcoBook has brought has done it's best to solve all the problems faced by Indian students mentioned above. EcoBook collaborates with schools to setup thrift stores in their book stores or libraries, where students could sell their reusable textbooks to EcoBook at INR 5 per book and buy other reusable books at a rate of INR 10 per book. By doing this, we aren't only saving costs spent per student on books, but also are saving hundreds of trees since we emphasize on the principles of reusing. These thrift stores make an estimated net revenue of around INR 30,000-1,00,000 annually per school. We donate this entire amount to the school that particular EcoBook store was operating it and instruct the school to provide more and more financial aid to the students who need it. 

EcoBook is a student organization and we as students have noticed other students face problems in affording books. We've worked in campaigns which served the poor in the past and we've now come up with a business model which sells the most affordable and economical books in the entire country. As we've been collaborating with schools to setup EcoBook stores and work together, we've been privileged to get the opportunity to speak to their principals, board members, teachers etc. and have taken all their set of ideas and have designed the business model of EcoBook which emphasizes in making study materials and education as affordable as possible while it also saves hundreds of trees each year due to the reusing of books.

EcoBook can be said to be currently at the prototype stage. The concept of EcoBook has been accepted by 5 schools by now and these schools are quite enthusiastic about the EcoBook business model since they get the opportunity to run the EcoBook store at their school bookstores or libraries which already have existing workers in it. These workers workers would have to play the role of a cashier for the functioning of EcoBook in that particular school. These schools are even assisted in terms of funds by EcoBook if they require it to initially buy the reusable books from the students. The net revenue made by these stores is entirely handed over to the school, which is to be used to provide more financial aid the the students who require it. This also builds the reputation of the institution. These schools are all-set to pilot EcoBook stores in their campus by March 2022.

At Ecobook, we not only buy and sell reusable books, but have other systems of things being done to preserve the environment and promote child welfare.

As students, we have noticed that people have adopted quite powerful habits such as 'reading', especially in the year 2020. A lot of students who are fond of books tend to buy new books to enjoy the variety in them. By doing this, they're again, killing trees! We at EcoBook have a come up with a solution for this. We've setup a system, called the ' NFT for a Book' system. In this system, we urge students who have finished reading books such as autobiographies, biographies, novels, fiction etc. to donate their books to EcoBook to which they would be rewarded with an NFT(digital art). We then take these books and give it to the library of the school the particular EcoBook was setup in. By doing this, we're able to provide the these  books to a large number students through which they save money on buying new book and killing another tree. Thus we can see that this 'NFT for a Book' system relies a lot on blockchain technology since we would not be able to convince the students to donate their books if we weren't rewarding them with these NFTs.

EcoBook is all set to launch within the next 2-3 months, which will be somewhere around March 2022. We've made agreements with almost 5 schools up till now through which we'll be able to impact the lives of almost 10,000 students this year. We have plans of scaling EcoBook to a number of schools by next year which will help us exponentially increase the number of student lives we're currently impacting.

We're trying to get Ecobook, which is a student organization focusing child welfare and environment conservation, the limelight it deserves. We are trying to setup EcoBook in as many schools as possible so that we'd be able to save more than thousands of trees each year and provide a lot more scholarships and financial aid to students who are in need of it. We've planned to take this concept of EcoBook to the Prime Minister of India, from where we'd be able to setup EcoBook in almost all states of the country. EcoBook is completely decentralized, thus anyone from any school can use the business model of EcoBook through which they too could save hundreds of trees each year and also provide more scholarships and financial aid to students of their school. This is our little step towards preventing disasters such as climate change.

Since we setup EcoBook thrift stores at schools, we allow the schools to entirely run the EcoBook store through which the entire net revenue belongs to them. Schools do keep a ledger of books bought and sold which will be shared with us to keep track on how many students we're able to help and keep a track on the trees we're saving each year and also keep track on the revenue cycle of EcoBook at that particular school.

So what we do in EcoBook is setup EcoBook stores at schools and instruct the schools we're set up in to buy reusable textbooks from students at INR 5 and sell them back at INR 10 and use the profits made to provide scholarships and financial aid to students who are in need of it. But there are few schools who aren't sure of making the initial investment for buying the reusable books from their students to resell them. EcoBook steps in here and provides a loan to the school of about $70-$100 to buy the books, which is to be repaid in full with 0% interest once the EcoBook store in that school meets net revenue positive. But the problem we're facing here is that we only have enough funds to provide these loans to barely one or two schools. This financial issue is what stands as a barrier for us from scaling EcoBook.

EcoBook has a team of 5 students who are really creative and productive. All 5 members of this team share an entrepreneurial mindset which makes it easier for us to understand each other better on the plans and goals we have for this organization. We have past experiences of buying new books and realizing that we'd been spending a lot of money on them. I, as the team lead of EcoBook has attended Harvard Business School edX courses to bring about more perspectives and heuristics into what we were doing. Our team is divided into two groups; Designing group which consists of two members who design social media posts, presentations etc. for EcoBook and the other 3 members are in the Sales and Strategy group which designs plans and strategies for EcoBook and goes around schools to present the concept of EcoBook. We've collectively gathered ideas and opinions from entrepreneurs, teachers and social workers to design the business model for EcoBook.

EcoBook basically works by partnering and collaborating with other schools by setting up stores at their libraries or book stores. The schools get to take all profits made at these stores as they're most probably the ones who will be investing money to buy reusable books from students and and then resell them for a profit which is given back to the students in the form of financial aid and scholarships. Schools use the existing employees at the school libraries or book stores as cashiers and accountants. This makes the operations for the EcoBook centre in the school much easier and cost effective. This partnership with schools helps us to run our stores with ease.